#insert-cleverurl

[aeldws]

The Official AELDWS 2024 Roster is:

@dingdangit

@enchi-elm

@insert-cleverurl

@killym

@ladysarai

@mister-eames

@obtuse-bird

@roosterbox

@stormofsharpthings

@theangrykimchi

@wali21

We had two people send in their sign ups within minutes of each other, so in the spirit of Inceptiversary we accepted eleven participants instead of ten!

The first prompt will be posted Friday, June 28 at 1AM EDT (click here for your timezone)! As a reminder, weeks 1 and 2 of AELDWS will be double elimination weeks.

Authors, welcome emails have been sent out. If you did not receive it (and it isn't in spam either), let us know!

[pinoruno]

tagged by @cowlovely for this tag game (<- link to the thingy!) thank u for the tag !!

i do not really use spotify so this is not accurate at all HSVKVDNKVK i got into zeppelin as i prepped for a concert :) redacted the username bc it is my Full government name LMFAO

tagging @insert-cleverurl @televisionenjoyer @draculagerard @pisshandkerchief @thehangerson and anyone else who wants to !!

[gayeddiejuice]

my friend sent me ur all too well destiel short film and I opened it on my phone said oh this is cool and went to go open it on my computer, which I think may have been the exact length of time during which u changed ur username. but I found you! I’m gonna watch it now

ahhh yay!!! let me know your thoughts!!! that short film is my legacy 😌

[angeloncewas]

i'm so fucking incensed over this BULLSHIT jesus christ i hope sapnap sues because if i have to see ONE MORE PERSON saying bullshit on the internet for shits and giggles i will lose it. not to mention ?? the screenshot is rlly easy to prove fake (the text on it is all in squares when run through ela unlike an actual ss in which it'd be at least loosely text shaped) and discord vc didn't even exist in 2016

People were so against BBH threatening legal action, but I really do agree. This is a serious problem that's only continuing and it's harming everyone from the creators to the community to the entirely unrelated victim just trying to tell their story - I don't know what else is gonna work to get it through their thick fucking skulls.

I'm glad that the piece of shit who made the accusation is also an idiot who can't put together the most basic facts, but that's not a statement I should even have to say. The gaming community in particular has such a long history with SA and grooming (though all areas of the "influencer" sphere have been touched by it) so I'm already kind of on edge as a viewer and it makes me physically sick to think about whatever entertainment they're finding in doing this.

[apple-but-sour]

hey! okay so maybe this wasn't exactly what i was meant to take away from this vassal conversation post but i thought it was interesting. you have a bit at the end that says "he navigated between not contradicting himself and framing what he says as being on Pogtopia’s side." so, question - why doesn't he ever contradict himself? why is he so insistent on Not Just Straight Up Lying? he definitely could've and what would he have lost?

It's safer that way. By framing giving Wilbur TNT as an "I have to" he could maintain his image as Pogtopia's ally in case something went wrong with the new plan: if Wilbur changed his mind or Tommy tried to intervene. It gave him plausible deniability.

Man's a tryhard at manipulation, there's no reason for him to suddenly drop the facade when he still benefits from keeping it up in the long run.

[thebibliosphere]

i hope i don't come off as rude, i support the protests and they're really important, but... we're in the middle of a pandemic? being out there runs the risk of spreading the virus among protestors doesn't it? are they gonna be okay?

I have no idea :((( I’m really scared for everyone.

[drwcn]

thoughts on jiang yanli and jin zixuan?

Hi! Thank you for the ask! :)

Let me start by saying I love both of them because even though they are good people, they are flawed protagonists made of flesh and blood, and are excellent candidates for character studies.

My opinion about both of them is that Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan are very similar. Now, that kind of sounds untrue because they have very different personalities and come from very different families. But at their core, they are both passive characters, even though their passivity manifests in different ways. JYL is passive because she's been pushed too much, while her husband is passive because he's not been pushed enough.

What they lack fundamentally is initiative.

Jiang Yanli

I ranted a lot of thoughts/headcanons for Jiang Yanli in (this post), reblogged from rainparadesong, so I won’t belabor similar points here. We could tell from that one instance where she stood up to Jin Zixun that she inherently had the qualities of a leader, of an individual capable of thinking for herself and making her own decisions. It's just that given who her parents were, those qualities have been beaten out of her, metaphorically speaking.

Jiang Yanli had a domineering mother who focused 50% of her time on her son Jiang Cheng and the other 50% of her time raging over the existence of Wei Wuxian. On the other hand, Jiang Yanli had an inattentive father who never paid much attention to anything other than her foster brother. Personality-wise, she was never the kind of daughter that her mother would have preferred, and because she was her mother's daughter, I don’t think she was particularly doted upon by her father either. Being a female in the society that she lived in, and being a non-cultivator, there wasn't much space for her to exercise her particular kind of talent: that strong interpersonal intelligence. Though she was the respected daughter of a prominent family, she has been ignored, sidelined, overshadowed and ultimately silenced by the people who mattered the most. Her maladaptive behavior towards the dysfunction of her family was her quiet disposition and her passivity. In a way, those were her coping mechanisms and survival skills developed for her specific household.

Jin Zixuan:

Jin Zixuan's passivity is a whole different story. It's not quite as obvious as Jiang Yanli’s but it is there.

Even though his father was a complete and utter shitface, there is no question that he did very much care about his son. Whether or not that care was healthy and productive is another matter, but JGS loved Jin Zixuan as much as he was able to love anyone.

You can tell that Jin Zixuan has lived a life where he's wanted for nothing and that if he just held out his hand and said diet Coke, a diet Coke would appear in his hand without him having to say thank you and please. (Credit:John Mullaney for that reference).

But while he might have been spoiled, Jin Zixuan was not fundamentally a bad person. He didn't have that vindictiveness or that superior entitlement that his cousin clearly had. What he was, is incredibly socially awkward. He clearly didn’t possess great communication skills, mostly because I believe he's never had the opportunity or need to develop and hone those skills. He was friends with Mianmian, and a lot could be gleamed about him from that relationship. Mianmian was friendly, loyal, strong in more ways than one and was truly good. She is perhaps the singular unproblematic character of this entire show.  And yet, Mianmian was protective of Jin Zixuan beyond the obligations of a subordinate to her young master; I think there was  genuine care and friendship between them that was hidden and layered within the plot. From Mianmian's behavior, we can extrapolate that Jin Zixuan was not a complete asshole. He truly reminds me of what Darcy said in Pride and Prejudice, that he finds it difficult to converse with people he doesn't know well. Funnily, I think Jin Zixuan has that in common with Lan Wangji. (Which is why I jokingly say that every Jiang sibling wants to date a Darcy or is a Darcy.)

Thus, because Jin Zixuan was so awkward and because he was so rich and privileged, he's never had to do anything for himself. I doubt that his dad would have let him be bullied when he was a kid. People around him probably had to be nice to him, and he probably never had to stand up for anything he believed in or fight for something he cared about. His wealth and social standing just made things happen. For most of his life, Jin Zixuan's passivity was protected by his family, until his family became the reason his passivity was a weakness to be exploited, which ultimately led to his death.

I think his wife was the first person he genuinely wanted to do something for. We saw him making an effort to reconcile the chasm between WWX and the rest of the world. Like Jiang Yanli, Jin Zixuan had potential to be more than himself. It's too bad that within the confines of the plot we never got to find out who that person could be.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

the untamed is on netflix, right? i think i've seen it. i'm enjoying your posts about it and my mom would love if i watched a chinese show (it looks chinese, i might be wrong though) but i'm kinda short on time so please pitch to me why i should watch it so i will be convinced and look past the lack fo time

Anonymous asked:

ok the untamed looks cool af how doesone watch it 

A L L R I G H T I’m finally going to make a rec post, I’ve put this off long enough.  You’ve definitely already started to watch it, clever, so please forgive me for using this as an excuse to pitch this show.

So, for starters, Anon, The Untamed is indeed on Netflix!  It is in Chinese!  If you (like me) do not understand Mandarin Chinese, the Netflix English subbing is…fine, it’s fine, but I recommend poking around in the fandom because every single form of address is changed to the character’s full name.  And maybe I just spent too much time doing translations for my old Spanish and Chinese and especially Latin classes, but I think there are some things that, A, shouldn’t be translated or, B, should be translated awkwardly over being translated incoherently.  

I digress.  My thoughts about maintaining forms of address in their native language for the sake of clarifying levels of respect/etc are not relevant here.  Chuck a note in my inbox if/when you get confused about everyone’s three names and I’ll write/link you a guide.

POINT IS.  The Untamed is an adaptation of the novel Mo Dao Zu Shi, which is generally translated as “The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation,” and my quick pitch for it is: There’s a plot, sure sure, it’s the story of Wei Wuxian (his fall from grace to Most Hated Person In Magic!China, and then his resurrection and efforts to solve a murder), and if you like character-driven fantasy narratives you Will Like This

B U T

You know that post “but is he…you know…your narrative foil?”  That’s this show.  If what you crave is “one character committedly pines over another for twenty years even when the entire world hates that person,” please let me interest you in Lan Wangji, the love interest.  They have a kid together.  It’s a great romance.  Literally what else do you want from me.  I love a narrative foil, I love a tragedy, I love an epic love story, I love a found family.  And good GOD do I love a character who self-destructs in an effort to do the right thing.

Wei Wuxian isn’t evil.  He’s not even especially malicious.  But when the chips were down and he needed to survive, and to save people, and to figure something out, he took the only avenue left to him, and it was—it was inevitable, really, that it make him the villain of the piece.  He saved a lot of lives.  Everyone except Lan Wangji hates him for it.  He’s already thoroughly despised by the time he starts actually doing things that are objectively bad.  Talk to me about it forever.

My usual list of free-form associative Things I Like That You Will Probably Also Like under the cut:

Wei Wuxian!  I know he’s the main character but I love him so much that he gets a bullet point!  He’s the kind of lighthearted goofball who’s perfected the “I Would Honestly Die Before Showing Emotion To Anyone, How Dare You Imply That I Am Not Sincere In My Perpetual Good Humor” mask, and it hits like a sledgehammer when that mask cracks.  I would watch this actor flip between smiles and homicidal rage all day.  He gets a hug from Son Boy in the last episode and I almost cried.  50000/10.

Lan Wangji!  A great love interest!  Noble to the core!  Incredibly bitchy!  I want five more just like him!

This is where I mention that China has strict censorship laws, so, despite the fact that they kiss and have sex and get married and the whole nine in the book, the show is all Intense Staring And Love Declarations Where They Never Say The L-Word.  But like.  Please trust me, it’s actually So Romance.  If anything I think I like the  romance in the show better.

Wen Ning!

I don’t have anything else to say about him, I just love him so goddamn much.  He and his sister Wen Qing are stars and the rest of these sinners don’t deserve them.

COMPETENT. VILLAINS.  I’ve spilled a lot of ink on this one lately, but I love competent villainy, I love villains who have Goals and plan to Achieve Them and actually pull it off.  Jin Guangyao, the big bad of the “present”(the part where Wei Wuxian is resurrected and kicking around trying to solve a murder), is actually phenomenally good at his job and I support him even though I enjoyed watching him go down in flames.  There are enough villains in this show for everyone to have their preferred type of villain, from Devoted Right Hand Man to Megalomaniacal Overlord to Freewheeling Engine Of Death.  GREAT villains in this show.  Which brings me to…

YI! CITY! ARC!  I’m not going to tell you that much about it, but it’s dark and tragic and features my very favorite villain in the entire show, Xue Yang, who is just.  *chef kiss*  A horrible monster of a man.  An unapologetic, cold-eyed shriek of a villain.  The very best at what he does, and what he does is absolutely horrible, and I would watch an entire series about this five-ish episode arc.  Also, I’ve adopted Song Lan/Xiao Xingchen from the Tragic Ships Shelter and someone should toss me a headcanon ask for them.  Any AU your little heart desires.  I love them.

THE MAGIC!  I know it took me a long time to get here, but it’s a very character driven show and I am a very character driven person and I just wanted to yell about characters for a minute.  But anyway, I’m told that the Untamed is a great onboarding point for this genre of Chinese fantasy novel, because they do a really good job of making the necessary points accessible.  I had no familiarity with wuxia/xianxia/etc when I started watching this and everything about cultivation made sense to me, or at least enough sense to be going on with.  It’s very lovely and fascinating and it’s where they put their Entire Non-Clothing Budget.

This is where I mention that their effects department clearly used their entire funding for, like, cool sword stunts and beautiful clothing.  The wolf puppet in particular is just.  Almost adorably terrible.  If that’s going to severely impact your enjoyment, Idk what to tell you, man.

Related to the above, I love plotlines about characters losing control of their magic.  That’s all I’m going to say about it.

Unreliable narrators, baby! They set up a lot of concrete facts about Wei Wuxian in the first two episodes that become obvious as complete bullshit as you go on, and it’s very satisfying to watch!  See also, Nie Huaisang, the most unreliable narrator of them all, whom I adore.

Beyond all those things…it’s just got a lot of great relationships in it.  It’s hugely driven by the affection people have for each other, or the places they feel they’vebeen deprived of that affection.  It has a lot of iterations of the same relationship in wildly distinct ways, if that makes sense—offhand, there are maybe four major sets of siblings, five if you count the Jins, and they are all radically different and insanely compelling.  The basic structure of Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji, the “black cultivator/white cultivator on a crusade to change the world” thing, appears a lot of times, and goes horribly awry in a slightly different way for all of them.  That kind of in-universe repetition of themes, doing the same thing over and over again looking for the Right Path, is one of my favorite things to appear in a story—see also, the Kencyrath (twins, Dreamweavers, Knorth lords, loyal Kendar, etc), the Animorphs (warrior teams, deaths on the field, etc), any number of other things I yell about.

TL;DR: The story is great and the cultivation is fascinatingand the schemes are elaborate, but

[artsy-alice]

i love ur modern au w/ huaisang constantly in mingjue’s jersey omg your art is so beautiful and their facial expressions are always hilarious (ft my absolute adoration over the sangcheng art, and also me almost typing hoodie instead of jersey lmao)

aaaa thank you! you are so sweet! i didn’t expect this much love for those AU doodles tbh. i’m new to the fandom! ><)/

anyways i kiiiinda have an idea for wangxian in this lil au and i’m planning to drawing them soon too! <3 and a bit more sangcheng maybe bc they’re super cute.

[cibeewastaken]

insert-cleverurl replied to your post “Ron groaned as Harry read a note from Malfoy with a blissed...”

the sheer concept of draco thinking Ron is asking Harry out. comedic genius. love that.

@insert-cleverurl but we all KNOW Draco still gets nightmare about Harry choosing Ron over him

[aeldws]

Welcome to Week 2 of AELDWS 2024!

Prompt: Last Chance

Genre: Apocalypse

Word count: Between 300 and 350 words, inclusive.

All drabbles are due by Tuesday, July 9 @ 1PM EDT (click here for your timezone!).

Please submit your drabbles in the body of an email to aeldws @ gmail . com with the following subject line and completed header:

Subject line: Week 2 - [Username] Title: Author: Warnings: [please make sure to include any potential triggers here!] Summary:

Author names will be removed before posting and revealed after voting has closed.

Reminder: Any drabbles that do not adhere to the prompt, genre, word count, deadline, or Arthur/Eames requirement will be eliminated from the challenge according to the mods' discretion. Mods will be using https://wordcounter.net for word counts.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to send us an email, ask, or message!

Authors tagged under the cut:

@dingdangit, @enchi-elm, @insert-cleverurl, @killym, @ladysarai, @mister-eames, @stormofsharpthings, @theangrykimchi,

[pinoruno]

“your top 10 favorite shows can say a lot about your personality”

tagged by @cowlovely to showcase my top 10 favorite tv shows! (thank you !!!! i love tag games about my little guys)

these. are not in any kind of order. nor are they comprehensive. if im being so honest i spent 40 minutes going “hmm….. what shows do i like….. OH!” and adding at random

tagging @insert-cleverurl @zipstick @tummyacheworld @draculagerard @thehangerson @heartshapedcas @jeannedarcgerard and literally anyone else who wants to !!!

[fairycosmos]

loved your online graveyards post, looked into your blog and discovered you are also doppelgänger girl. love that.

[angeloncewas]

I always considered Joey Graceffa MCYT mostly bc I knew of him through Lizzie LMAO specifically as “the gay mcyt” (and its somehow kinda true even now)

Assigned gay by Solaine Lieyuu Insert-Cleverurl...

That's funny though. I mean it is true, he's just up against Scott, Ant, and Velvet now (there's probably more I can't think of)

[pangzi]

hey what’s up you watched my wandering brother right

i'm watching it yes! I'm halfway through right now

[somebodyswatson]

how old is ur sister now?

She’s 17 (I know)